Washington News Bureau

Census workers go door-to-door for responses as deadline looms

Responses for the 2020 census are supposed to be completed in less than two weeks and census workers are knocking on doors to get the final households counted.

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, about 66% of households across the country have self-responded to the questionnaire and the Census Bureau has collected more than 94 percent of responses in total.

The deadline for the data to be collected is Sept. 30.

[RELATED: Georgia ranks near bottom in census participation with deadline less than 2 weeks away]

“We will knock on your door as many times as we need to to get a response,” said Tim Olson, the associate director for field operations for U.S. Census Bureau.

The coronavirus pandemic has of course affected the process, pushing back deadlines and adding new safety precautions for field workers.

“We’ve had to revise our schedules a couple times and we had to acquire literally more than 40 million items of personal protective equipment, masks, gloves, hand sanitizer,” said Olson.

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The 2020 census asks a handful of questions including your name, the names of people you live with, your age and race.

For the first time this year, people have been able to answer the form online.

Olson said of the people who have self-responded, about four out of five have done it online.

The answers affect how much money are given to different areas for critical public services like schools and hospitals as well as representation in Congress.

“The pandemic has certainly highlighted for everybody the importance of emergency services, health care, our school funding. All of those things that we rely upon,” said Olson.